A film at Rs 500, awaiting a ticket to Germany

Two boys in their twenties made a film merely out of pocket money. All it took to make this 16-minute fiction film in digital format is little more than Rs 500.

A few hundreds were spent to send the film to a film festival in the US and another festival in Germany. But the real trouble has begun only now.

Up and Coming Film Festival in Hannover, Germany, has selected their film, titled An Obsolete Alter, out of 2,982 films submitted from 54 countries.

This is the only selection from India in this festival.

Instead of being cheerful, the invitation has covered the faces of the young makers of the film with a shadow of gloom.

Festival authorities want the makers to be present during its screening in the festival, to be held between November 21 and 24.

While the organisers would bear all the costs of accommodation in Hannover, the directors have to arrange for the travel cost.

“None of us earn anything. Making a film merely with our pocket money was a possible task for us. But raising money for the travel to and fro is almost impossible unless we get any sponsorship,” Mrigankasekhar Ganguly, one of the two directors and a student, told HT.

His codirector, Hyash Tanmay, is faced with the same problem.

T he film has also been selected at the Eastern Breeze International Film Festival in Canada that begins on October 11. Significantly, this is the first filmmaking venture of the duo, which was drawn to “zero budget filmmaking” by the recent spread of the trend in Kolkata over the past four years.

The theme of their film has been drawn from Rabindranath Tagore’s “Achalayatan”.

The story unfolds over the incident of a rape. While the rape victim faced various types of responses from the society, there were also people sympathetic to the victim.

But in a twist in the tale, the victim is found to be a homosexual man dressed as a woman.

As soon as the identity revealed, all the support that the victim was getting so far vanished in a whisker.

“We filmed it in five days, between July 23 and July 28, this year. Little more time was spent on editing, composing music and other post-production work. We could do it at such low cost because everyone involved in the film participated voluntarily,” Tanmay said.